Around Maryland

Baltimore Department of Public Works Director Jason Mitchell, who announced his resignation earlier this year, has agreed to remain with the city until the end of the fiscal year. Mitchell announced his resignation in January amid mounting pressure from some members of the Baltimore City Council and said he would leave in April. However, Mitchell has since agreed to remain with the department through June 30 to complete several ongoing projects, City Administrator Faith Leach said Monday.

Ivelisse Page already had 15 inches of her colon and 28 lymph nodes removed to treat her colon cancer, but in the winter of 2008 she received more devastating news. The cancer had spread to her liver. Page’s doctor, Dr. Luis Diaz – an oncologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine — gave her an 8% chance of living for more than two years.

Although the number of times Montgomery County Public School administrators have called police to respond to incidents is down this year — 1,329 calls so far, compared to 2,814 for all of last school year — the number of arrests has increased. Calls for service included requests for help from fire and emergency services for medical issues, along with law enforcement related calls. According to data presented to county council committees on public safety and education, the number of arrests of students in schools has gone up: from three in the 2021-2022 school year to 13 this year.

It’s lunchtime at Benjamin Franklin High School, and as students stream in and out of crowded hallways, a small group of teenage moms congregates around a low, circular table in a closed-off room. With them are their toddlers and young children — some eating, one singing and another breastfeeding. The South Baltimore institution launched a family center in 2014 in response to a number of Benjamin Franklin students juggling families with studies and needing more resources to stay in school. Since the center’s inception, Benjamin Franklin has seen fewer absences, more students going to college and a teen parent graduation rate of 67% to 80%, school representatives say.

Honeybee losses are at record highs across the nation, with Maryland beekeepers reporting a 55% winter loss in 2021, the second highest in the country, according to an annual survey from the Bee Informed Partnership, a national collaboration of research laboratories. And it’s just not bees. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources warns that habitat loss and invasive species imperil the state’s 1,200 rare, threatened or endangered native species among the more than 15,000 species listed. Even common species are at risk, it says.

President Joe Biden on Monday nominated two Baltimore men — a former public defender and a longtime federal prosecutor — to the federal bench in Maryland following his pledge to appoint judges with diverse backgrounds and experiences. If he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Brendan Hurson would become the second Biden appointee on the U.S. District Court for Maryland to have been a federal public defender. 

Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman announced Deputy Health Officer Tonii Gedin would serve as acting health officer following Dr. Nilesh Kalyanaraman’s promotion to the state health department.

There were 185 rape cases when the Baltimore County Police Department reported their official 2022 crime statistics to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But when annual crime figures made their way to the public, almost half the rape cases had disappeared — the number was now 90. Over at least the last two years, Baltimore County’s official annual crime numbers — which the county cites in public messaging about crime trends — have included just a portion of rape cases police actually investigated.

Henry Wise High School’s gymnasium was full of neighbors from Upper Marlboro, Maryland, frustrated about the number of traffic incidents nearby. Just last week, one of the school’s own died in a car crash. The emergency meeting was held by Prince George’s Council Vice Chair Wala Blegay after 18-year-old Cayliy Haygood was killed in a crash on March 7. There have been two other crashes in the same area within the last week.